


Echolalia

by w_ren



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-13
Updated: 2012-09-13
Packaged: 2017-11-14 03:35:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/510895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/w_ren/pseuds/w_ren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spencer is smart enough to know that kissing Tobias Hankel is a terrible idea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echolalia

“I – I'm sorry he hurt you. I had to go out.”  
  
Tobias is clutching at the sleeves of his sweatshirt. His eyes are wide – free of the wildness of Charles or the fervent, deep burn of Raphael, but uncertain, fearful. He looks Spencer up and down. The glow of the fire casts shadows across his features.  
  
He looks to Reid's feet.  
  
The sole of the wounded foot has started to colour with bruises. There are bright spots across the prominence of his ankle where Charles had gripped him. When Tobias sees this, he steps back, just a little. “I'm sorry he hurt you,” he repeats.  
  
“It's okay,” murmurs Spencer without thinking, because it really isn't. Tobias steps closer, sets down the bag he's holding. He kneels before Spencer. Before the younger man can react he has Spencer's hands in his, closing them around the bruises forming beneath the handcuffs. Spencer hisses at the contact and Tobias looks up at him.  
  
“I – this'll help. Here. I can help,” he assures Spencer, and one hand digs into the bag. He pulls out a vial and a needle, neatly packaged, the kind from a needle exchange.  
  
Spencer shakes his head. The movement fills him with pain, a fresh burst of pressure behind his skull, throbbing to the same beat as the damage in his feet. “No! I don't want it. I don't want it, okay Tobias?”  
  
Even after begging, he's still shocked when Tobias sets the vial aside. He's still holding Spencer's hands in one of his. The other drops to his damaged foot, runs from ankle to arch to toe. Spencer gasps, curling in over himself, over his and Tobias' clutched hands. His forehead is pressed to Tobias' shoulder and tears spring to his eyes. “Tobias,” he chokes, “That hurts.”  
  
In response, Tobias grips his foot harder. This time, he cries out, fingers tightening around Tobias' wrist where it is pressed between his chest and thighs. “Don't -”  
  
“Are you a sinner?” Tobias asks him, voice barely a whisper, lips pressed to the shell of Spencer's ear. There's none of the fire of the other two personalities, as if he genuinely wants to know, will accept whatever Spencer says.  
  
“No, Tobias,” and it could be a demand to stop hurting him or an answer to his question, or both. “I'm not. I promise.”  
  
Tobias brings his foot up off the floor, cradling the heel. He brings the damaged appendage to his chest, leaning away from Spencer to do so, and places a kiss to the ball of Spencer's foot. It's tender, almost, and through the pain of touch Spencer is aware of a gentleness, of a lightness. His toes curl against Tobias' nose.  
  
Tobias pulls a bottle of water and a cloth – a rag, maybe for cleaning guns or tools – from his bag. Wetting the material, he tentatively touches it to the darkened flesh. The water is cool against the inflamed flesh and drying blood flakes off where the branch as broken the skin. He carefully cleans all of the cuts while Spencer clenches his teeth and tries not to cry out, once again bringing his forehead to the junction of Tobias' shoulder and neck.  
  
Tobias runs the cloth along the bed of Spencer's nail where blood has pooled and congealed. When he's done, he sets it down and brings his hands back up to Spencer's wrists, wrapping his fingers around them. “I'm sorry,” he says into the curl of Spencer's hair. There is a cut on Spencer's forehead, and the hair sticks to the blood there. Tobias thinks of the burn on his own head, where they match. “You were given to me for a reason, you know.”  
  
And he kisses him. It's not a very good kiss – Spencer is drowsy from pain and hunger and his head wound and Tobias didn't even mean to kiss him, and mostly it's an accident except for the part where Tobias wanted it to happen.  
  
“They are not my sin,” he murmurs against Spencer's closed mouth. “They were God's Will.”  
  
“You can stop this,” denies the younger, clutching his hands and pulling back. “You take me back to my team.”  
  
Tobias yanks him forward. He spills from the chair and into Tobias, crying out when his knees strike the floor and when he lands on his damaged foot. Tobias presses them together, thigh to thigh, chest to chest, and Spencer's cuffed hands are crushed between them. He kisses him, tries to be gentle.  
  
It's meant to be an apology, because his father can be rough and because Spencer isn't a sinner. Instead it's something else, something hot in his hands, but Tobias doesn't know what. Spencer's just that little bit taller than him, and his neck has to bend to account for the height difference, and Tobias tugs him down again. He's frightened, cold, and he shakes just a little, little shivers through the length of his body.  
  
“Please don't hurt me again,” he hears Spencer say. “Tobias -”  
  
He settles back and sits on his ankles and wraps his arms around Spencer, draws the other forward, against him, until the young doctor's straddled across his thighs. With his weight off of his damaged foot, Spencer's trembling decreases slightly. His hands go from crushed between them to splayed wide across Tobias' chest. Tobias' own hands press into the small of his back.  
  
Tobias tilts his head back and stares up at Spencer, who's jaw is clenched tight and who's eyes won't meet his. “You can save me, Tobias.”  
  
Tobias runs the tips of his fingers up Spencer's bony spine, brings them to tangle into his hair, the pads of his thumbs rubbing along his jaw. He touches his lips to Spencer's neck. “Don't you see?” he whispers into the chilled flesh. “I already have.”  
  
Spencer is at a loss. He's afraid. He's afraid to do – or not do – something that could set off one of the other personalities, and he's afraid of what Charles or Raphael would do upon taking control. It's fairly obvious how Charles would perceive any leanings towards homosexuality that he might see in his son. Spencer doesn't need to see police records or a school nurses' reports to child services to tell Tobias has been severely abused. So he does nothing, forces himself not to react when Tobias angles his head downwards and kisses him again.  
  
He keeps his mouth closed. The contact is chaste, if lingering, and Tobias holds him tightly and desperately. One hand returns to Spencer's back, slipping beneath his sweater vest and shirt, and he gasps at the cold. The kiss quickly dissolves from something almost tender to something more forceful when Tobias bites his lower lip, flicks his tongue over the pink flesh.  
  
Spencer pulls back as far as he can. His elbows lock and he stares down at Tobias, all eyes and uncertainty. He thinks, logically, that the safest reaction is none at all – that to interact in this capacity with Tobias could be a trigger for a less appreciative personality, that it could be taken as consent or encouragement to go further. That Tobias is a killer, not a sinner, and Spencer is pretty confident in his judgement that Tobias will eventually back down, if Spencer does not respond to his advances.  
  
But a part of him wants to respond, wants to reciprocate.  
  
He compares his situation to the factors identified as requirements of expression of the symptoms collectively called Stockholm syndrome. Firstly, Stockholm syndrome takes time – a minimum of several days – to develop. Spencer estimates that it has been two days at most, though closer to one and a half, since J.J. knocked on Tobias' door, and he has been unconscious for nearly one half of this, so it cannot be considered applicable.  
  
Secondly, the development of Stockholm syndrome relies on the hostage having deluded themselves into believing that the captor is showing them kindness by either refraining from hurting them, refraining from killing them or providing them with goods (eg. food, water, medical attention). Spencer can accept this as applying to Tobias himself, but not to Raphael or to Charles. So this condition is partly fulfilled.  
  
Thirdly, that a certain amount of interaction occur between captor and hostage occurs. While so close – physically – to Tobias, it seems reasonable to suggest that this requirement has been fulfilled, however when he considers their level of contact over the period of confinement, he finds that he has exchanged more words with Raphael overall, with the least amount of contact being with Charles.  
  
So it follows that Spencer is not attempting to cope with his experience through empathy with or a false attraction to his captor.  
  
It takes seconds for Spencer to deduce this, and several more to deduce that it is possible – not definite, but possible – that he is attracted to Tobias. The older man does not fit perfectly to the parameters within which Spencer would usually categorise someone as attractive (he is not, for example, traditionally attracted to killers), but he is certainly not beyond them. If they had met in another environment – one involving significantly less ritual slaughter – he might have even asked the man out for coffee, or at least accepted if the man had asked him. However, Spencer is unsure whether the possible desire for a safe, casual coffee date translates well into kissing a man who very probably just broke multiple bones in his foot.  
  
He doesn't have time to decide on the safest course of action, however, because Tobias has suddenly gotten so much closer. His lips brush the line of Spencer's jaw and the texture of stubble against Spencer's chin is enough to make his mouth go dry. Without thinking (and wow, when was the last time he did something without thinking?), he turns his head and catches Tobias full on the mouth. His lips part against Spencer's and Spencer lets out a terribly embarrassing moan.  
  
It is a positive feedback loop of pleasure. Every sound, every mouth made by one of them encourages the other, takes it a step further. Tobias hooks his thumbs under Spencer's woollen vest and filthy shirt and _pulls_ , so that they come up over his head and bunch around his wrists, kept there by the handcuffs. He traces his hands up Spencer's sides, finding each bruise and scrape, before moving Spencer into a kneeling position and retracing the path with his mouth. He apologises for each one. In turn, Spencer tugs his jumper and undershirt up and out of the way and takes to nipping and sucking at the protrusion of his exposed collarbone. The mark that blooms there is his mark, his claim – Tobias has no qualms in sharing his body with Raphael and Charles, and so it seems only fair that Spencer own a piece of him, too.  
  
Tobias presses his back into the filthy wood of the cabin's floor. The splinters catch on Spencer's skin and in his hair. The older of the two peels off his sweatshirt entirely and Spencer locks eyes with him and calls out his name when he turns away, cheeks flushed pink. Tobias' body is covered in scars. Spencer finds them with his hands. The worst ones are hypertrophic, raised and knotted beneath his fingers, and he says sorry for these ones. He kisses the apologies into a bracelet of circular cigarette burns on his wrist and into old track marks in the crook of his elbow.  
  
When the older man takes him in hand, Spencer scrabbles for purchase in the rotting wood. He knocks over the chair and it falls to the ground with a clatter. Tobias laughs lightly into the curve of his neck and swipes his thumb along Spencer's slit. He makes his way back down Spencer's chest, kissing the darkness of his nipples and the sharpness of his hips before taking Spencer into his mouth. The younger moans and his hands find the back of Tobias' head, burrowing into the thick hair. He wraps one leg around Tobias's waist. For the moment, all he can think of is the want to be touched and to touch, to have as much of himself close to Tobias as possible.  
  
He is dimly aware, in some far-off corner of his brain, that this is completely inappropriate. He should, at the very least, be taking advantage of the situation – Spencer is far from strong, and he's in a terrible condition, but if he tried, he could probably get his hands around Tobias' neck. If he wasn't strong enough to do it with his hands, he could most certainly use the chain of the handcuffs. Eleven pounds of pressure. Eleven pounds was all it took.  
  
It's easy to kill a man.  
  
But Spencer is not thinking, he's writhing beneath Tobias. The man's lips are wrapped around his length and his hands are touching him, burning hot against his stomach and his thighs. Spencer can think of little else beyond _Tobias, Tobias, Tobias_ , and it takes all he has not to cry out.  
  
When he comes, he doesn't think of anything but Tobias. He shudders and Tobias mumbles something against him and strokes the hollow of his hip. Careful not to bump Spencer's foot, he crawls back up the length of his body and settles on the ground beside him. Spencer curls against him, unwilling to surrender the warmth of his blood beneath the skin.  
  
“I'm sorry,” says Tobias. He has said these words to Spencer more times than he can count, burned them into his skin, and Spencer has believed them every time. The cuffs are cold where they touch his skin.  
  
Spencer kisses the bump of Tobias' clavicle, right where the skin is turning blue with his mark. Tobias pulls him closer.  
  
“It's okay.”  
  
\---  
  
He watches Tobias bleed out.  
  
There's dirt and splinters of wood under his nails; his thumbnail is cracked halfway through. He clutches at Tobias with his filthy hands and there's blood on them now. Beneath him, Tobias' face is turning white.  
  
He kisses him, his mouth, chin, cheeks, neck. Blood wets his lips when Tobias coughs it up and he's almost sick right there. He cries, and his tears are a bridge between them, falling from him and onto Tobias. He had been aiming for his stomach.  
  
God's Will had worked against him.  
  
“You killed him,” says Tobias. He runs a hand along Spencer's cheek and smiles childishly. Spencer grabs his hand and holds it against his cheek so that the tears catch in his palm.  
  
“I killed _you_ ,” he sobs. He can hear Hotch and the others in the distance, searching for him, calling his name out into the darkness of the graveyard. He doesn't want to see them right now. “Tobias – I'm so sorry, Tobias -”  
  
The older man shakes his head and smiles wider, eyes shining with tears through the shadows. Spencer presses his forehead against the man's neck and wraps his arms around him, feels the blood flowing between them, separating them, an impassable red river. His shaking hands seek out the bruise, fully bloomed, like a flower on Tobias' clavicle. It sits approximately three and a half inches above the bullet hole in his chest. He kisses it.  
  
“You think I'll get to see my mum again?” Tobias asks. His mouth twitches, flickering between a grin and a grimace. “I'd like to see her again.”  
  
Spencer can taste the salt of his own tears on Tobias' skin. It tastes far better than Tobias' blood in his mouth. “I'm sorry,” he repeats, because they are the only two words that he can think of, other than _Tobias, Tobias, Tobias._ All he can do is give Tobias' words back to him.  
  
Hotch finds him moments later, crying for a corpse. He doesn't understand. None of them do.  
  
Spencer can't bring himself to care.  
  
 _I'm sorry.  
_


End file.
